Agenda item

-       Item raised by Trevor Durham (Draft report attached)

Further to Minute No. 42, Trevor Durham presented a draft report proposing amendments to the Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Licensing Policy in respect of non-Chesterfield hackney carriages being used as private hire vehicles within the controlled district of Chesterfield Borough Council together with subsequent changes to the requirements for new drivers and a trade proposal to defer Driving Standards Agency (DSA) driving tests, and of training in child sexual exploitation (CSE).

The proposed amendments aimed to safeguard public safety while balancing the requirements for Chesterfield drivers against those from other authorities.

The draft report set out the background to the proposed amendments arising from non-Chesterfield hackney carriages operating as private hire vehicles within the controlled area of Chesterfield Borough Council. It was confirmed the Council had no enforcement powers over such non-Chesterfield vehicles and drivers unless a criminal offence was committed.

Most of the non-Chesterfield hackney carriages were licensed by Rossendale Borough Council, which had now introduced an ‘Intended use Policy’ requiring applicants for a new hackney carriage vehicle licence to use the vehicle predominantly in the Borough of Rossendale and to be resident within 30 miles of the council boundary. Licensing officers had developed an information sharing system with their Rossendale colleagues where there was clear evidence of a hackney carriage working predominantly outside Rossendale to enable Rossendale to consider revoking the licence.

Some private hire operators had argued that the more stringent requirements to be met by applicants for a combined hackney carriage and private hire driving licence in Chesterfield forced them to recruit drivers licensed by other authorities.

The draft report set out a number of options to address this, including:

·        A voluntary code of conduct for private hire operators to take responsibility for the behaviour of non-Chesterfield hackney carriage drivers while working locally on a private hire basis (attached as Appendix A to the draft report);

·        Having separate private hire and hackney carriage driving licences, with a simplified practical test of geographical knowledge but not a written geography test for private hire drivers. Private hire drivers would then only be eligible to drive private hire vehicles, not hackney carriages. The application process for hackney carriage drivers would remain the same and a hackney carriage licence would allow the holder to drive both hackney carriages and private hire vehicles. It was confirmed that a private hire driver would only need to pass the additional written geographic test in order to convert to a hackney carriage driver’s licence.

Mandy Shaw had suggested that provision be made to issue a temporary licence for a maximum of three months to allow time for the DSA test to be taken, and the draft report proposed that this should be at the discretion of officers based on the availability of a test, the efforts of the driver or operator to obtain a test date and the driving history of the applicant and not based on the inability of the applicant to pass the test.

A training package on child sexual exploitation (CSE) awareness had been developed and was being delivered to taxi drivers, with the issue also being incorporated into the knowledge test for new applicants, and the draft report proposed that this training should be mandatory with a sanction of 12 penalty points and referral to the Appeals and Regulatory Committee where drivers failed to attend within a reasonable time period without reasonable excuse.

The draft report included recommendations on the proposed amendments to the Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Licensing Policy, which would be considered by the Appeals and Regulatory Committee in August.